


Tramps Like Us

by glorious_spoon



Series: Apple Pie Life [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-25
Updated: 2010-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, adjusting to the apple pie life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tramps Like Us

**Author's Note:**

> _Baby this town rips the bones from your back  
>  It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap   
> We gotta get out while we're young   
> `Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run._  
> -Bruce Springsteen; 'Born to Run'

Sid has a dog. Half-Rottweiler, half-mutt, a bouncy rambunctious puppy with a pink leopard-print collar that Mari picked up from a garage sale, probably as a joke.   
  
Dean never used to have a problem with dogs. Even liked them, in the vague kind of way that people like things they don't have a lot of contact with. Sammy always--  
  
Anyway, Sid and him, they're kind of getting to be friends. It's buddy-buddy, domestic and casual and totally fucking alien to Dean, but he's a cool guy for a civilian. So he invites Dean and Lisa and Ben over for a backyard barbeque about a month after Dean starts looking at things that aren't the bottom of a whiskey bottle and starts showering and shaving and acting as close to normal as he's capable of getting.  
  
"Their backyard is literally five yards away from us," Dean says bemusedly, watching Lisa tug a pretty flowered dress down over her head. Her back curves up to make a perfect arch, sleek and muscular and he steps back, the better to enjoy the view. "They see you go out to get the paper in your pajamas every morning."  
  
She rolls her eyes. "I can't reach the zipper," she says, and that is just _total_  bullshit, because she's still the bendiest chick he's ever met. "Do me up?"  
  
There's about a dozen things he could say to that, but Ben's waiting in the hallway, so he manages to keep them all behind his teeth. Her skin is smooth and warm under the crisp cotton, and he can't resist dropping a kiss into the hollow of her neck when he's done. "Do we have to go?"  
  
She slaps him, playfully, and pulls away. "Yes, we have to go."  
  
(Sometimes, he thinks about the old sitcoms he used to watch, him and Sammy in whatever motel room they got for the night, half-drunk after a successful hunt and throwing popcorn at the screen. Sam liked to criticize the plots,  _seriously, Dean, this makes_  no sense,  _if he's the father why doesn't she just--_  
 __  
You're missing the point, Sammy. She couldn't tell him because the gardener, what's-his-name--  
  
\--I'm starting to worry about how seriously you take these shows.  
  
Shut up, bitch.  
  
You do realize that's not actually an argument, right?  
  
Sometimes, he wonders if he fell through the TV screen in one of those motel rooms. Hell, with his life, it's not like that's completely outside the realm of possibility. He doesn't know whether or not that's a good thought, although the fact that it's better than most of the alternatives probably says something.)  
  
Lisa has a batch of cookies artfully arranged on a hand-painted platter with blue Saran wrap over it. Dean's the one who made them; Lisa can't cook for shit. Dean's got twenty years and change of experience making edible meals out of dollar-store ingredients on motel room hot plates, and with Lisa's nice state-of-the-art kitchen, he's a regular fucking Martha Stewart.  
  
(The first Saturday after he poured all his liquor down the drain, watched it swirl away and disappear, she caught him cooking at three in the morning, mashed potatoes and stuffing and homemade gravy, Sammy's favorites.  
  
She didn't say _I didn't know you could cook_  or  _what's going on with you,_  just started washing the dirty dishes he'd stacked up in the sink, and that's the first time he thought that maybe he really could stay.)  
  
Mari is pretty and blonde and a schoolteacher. Sid has a gig with a construction company, and he's been talking about maybe getting Dean a job there. The  _as long as you can keep your ass sober_  is unspoken, but Dean can read it just fine all the same. He's not a drunk, not really, but explaining the distinction would involve a whole hell of a lot more honesty than he feels like dealing with.   
  
Mari hugs him at the door, and Sid shakes his hand while she kisses Lisa on the cheek. The backyard's already crowded, but it's empty inside. Shiny wood floors and matching furniture, family portraits on the wall. Ben kicks his shoes off and wanders off toward the den, where a bunch of the local kids apparently have some kind of video-game death-match going on.  
  
"...in the fridge, if you want some," Sid is saying.  
  
Dean looks up. "Sorry, what?"  
  
"I said, there's soda in the fridge, if you want some." Sid gives him a look, then adds, "Beer, too."  
  
"Think I'll stick with soda," Dean says blandly, and pretends not to notice the way Sid and Mari relax, just a little.  
  
 _Drunken Ex-Hunter Rampages Through Family Gathering, news at eleven,_  he thinks, and then Lisa puts her hand, small and warm, at the base of his spine. "We brought cookies," she says, smiling at Sid. There's a little bit of a sharp edge to it. "Do you have someplace we could set them down?"  
  
"Those look delicious," Mari says. "Did you hit up the bakery this morning?"  
  
"These are all Dean's doing, actually." Lisa slides her arm around his waist and he pulls her close, smelling her flowery shampoo and hoping this is right. That this is the right thing to do. He's still off-balance here, in this nice clean neighborhood with all these nice, clean, polite people. Still feels like he's playing a part, but he'll get used to it eventually, he guesses.  
  
Not like he has much choice.  
  
(Sam always liked to pretend that he was different from Dean and Dad, that he wasn't street-grease, that he'd never lived in the kind of places where you could hear rats fighting in the walls.  
  
 _God, Dean, you're such a pig,_  and Dean would belch, more for effect than anything else. Rub his belly, stretch, laugh at the expression on Sam's face.  
 __  
I haven't got any complaints. And, hey, I'm not the one who hasn't been laid in...what is it now, three months?  
  
Oh, screw you.  
  
Sorry, Sammy, you might be that hard-up, but I sure ain't.  
  
After Hell, after Ruby, he mostly gave the prissiness up, but he always was better with nice middle-class civilians than Dean. Which is, you know, ironic.)  
  
"So," Sid says, popping the top off a beer bottle. "I was talking to Mark, and he said he could definitely use an extra hand. Said to come by the office whenever you're free."  
  
Dean drinks from his soda. Coke, fizzy and cold and too-sweet on his tongue. Across the kitchen is a black and chrome fridge that looks like it could launch into orbit. There are a dozen family photos stuck to it with colorful magnets, and it still feels weird to be in a kitchen like this for no good reason. No case, no witnesses, no monsters, just a nice normal guy who's offering him a chance at building some kind of new life. "Thanks, man. I mean it."  
  
"No problem. So, you and Lisa--"  
  
Dean has a pretty good idea of where that sentence is going, but he never gets to finish it. The doorbell rings again, and there's a echoing bark from upstairs, the clatter of something falling, heavy paws on the stairs.  
  
"Damn dog knocked over the gate again," Sid is muttering, but Dean's not listening. The dog's big, dark-colored and muscular and it's galloping straight at them through the kitchen door. His gun's in the house but there's still a knife tucked into his boot. He can feel the shape of it, cold and hard against his ankle, not that it would do him any good, not that it would do him any good at all--  
  
It's not a panic attack. Dean Winchester does not do panic attacks, but his fingers twitch for the knife all the same, and he can't keep himself from flinching away when the dog (it's a puppy, just a  _puppy,_  really) _yips_  inquisitively and noses at his leg. His hip hits the counter, and Sid gives him a quizzical look as he reaches for the collar.  
  
"Hey, Buster, leave the nice man alone, will you? Sorry about that--"  
  
"It's fine," Dean says, forcing his muscles to relax. He pulls a smile onto his face, but either he's out of practice or Sid is sharper than he seems, because it doesn't look like he's buying it.  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
"Yeah, man, just...not really a dog person, you know?"  
  
"Sorry," Sid says again, and it looks like he genuinely means it. "Is it just a thing, or did something--"  
  
"I got bit a couple of years back," Dean says. He reaches for his soda, just to have something solid to hold in his hands. Looks down. The floor between his feet is black and white checkered tile. "Pretty badly. Just, you know, makes me twitchy sometimes."  
  
( _Sic him, boys,_  and Sammy against the wall struggling so hard Dean could almost hear his joints popping from where he stood and Lilith's black and rotting face behind the pretty girl-skin of Ruby's host and then the door fell away and all he could see were teeth, red eyes and snarling mouths, sulfur and blood.)

***

Sid worries and apologizes and promises to keep the dog locked away the next time Dean's over. It's kind of embarrassing, but he's a nice guy. A buddy.

  
(Dad would have told him to suck it up,  _face your fears, son, you can't help anybody if you freeze up like that._  
  
Sam would have laughed at him for freaking out over the puppy-dog, but there would have been apple pie along with the burgers he picked up from the diner and he wouldn't have complained about Dean cranking the Zeppelin and singing along as off-key as he possibly could.  
  
But then, Dad's dead and so is Sammy and all Dean has here is somebody whose closest acquaintance with fear and pain is a broken ankle from a car crash back in high school.)   
  
Later on, they get to talking, pool and poker and football games, all harmless guy stuff, and the next thing Dean knows he's invited to Sid's weekly card game down at the local watering hole, and it's all fine. It's nice and normal and  _fine._  Just what Sammy would have wanted for him.  
  
He starts work the next week, signs all the papers under the name  _Dean Campbell_ and shakes the foreman's hand. The fake ID is one of the last ones Sam put together and it won't stand up to any kind of serious scrutiny, but he doesn't expect anybody's gonna go looking too hard for him.   
  
As far as anybody who matters is concerned, Dean Winchester is dead.


End file.
